Comparison of the performance of native and invasive plants of Senecio vulgairs L.

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1 State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan, China
2 School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geoscience (Wuhan), Wuhan, China
3 Faculity of Biology and Agriculture Engineering, Thai Nguyen Uiniversity of Education, Thai Nguyen, Vietnam
4 Département des Sciences Naturelles, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Bujumbura, Burundi
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.2012v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Ecology, Plant Science
Keywords
dry matter content., Enemy Release Hypothesis (ERH), Evolution of Increased Competitive Ability (EICA) hypothesis, reproductive allocation, root/shoot ratio
Copyright
© 2016 Cheng et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Cheng D, Nguyen V-T, Ndihokubwayo N. 2016. Comparison of the performance of native and invasive plants of Senecio vulgairs L. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2012v1

Abstract

According to the Evolution of Increased Competitive Ability (EICA) hypothesis and Enemy Release Hypothesis (ERH), comparing the plants from the same species, individuals from the invasive range will outperform those from the native range. However, not all recent studies support the prediction of these two hypotheses. In this study, we sought to test the prediction by comparing the performance of common groundsel ( Senecio vulgaris ) taken from native (Europe) and invasive (China) ranges. Those plants were grown in a greenhouse and in a common garden, and harvested with various vegetative and reproductive traits measured. We found that although the plants grown in the common garden grew and reproduced better than those grown in the greenhouse, the invasive plants outperformed the native plants in relation to most vegetation parameters (except plant height) and reproduction in both experiments; and generally, the invasive plants allocated more proportion of biomass to root than the native plants. However, the proportion of biomass allocated to reproductive organ and relative dry matter content were the same between the native and invasive plants, no matter among the plants grown in the greenhouse or in the common garden. Our study partially supported the predictions of the EICA and ERH and indicated that evolution might have happened to S. vulgaris invasive to China.

Author Comment

This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.

Supplemental Information

Growth and reproductive traits measured on the native and invasive Senecio vulgaris plants

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2012v1/supp-1